There’s a lot going on in our world today. According to the latest forecasts, the economic situation is slowing down. The big guys in the technology sphere are trying to figure out what the “next big thing” is, since the PC, cellphone, flat-screen TV, and auto markets are all saturated. In the military segment, the latest budget requests are delivering confusing information about future contracts and technologies as military spending shifts from chasing terrorists in deteriorating Middle Eastern countries, to preparing for war against near-peer adversaries like China and Russia. And adding to the confusion, there are many more traditional business models slamming into the ground at terminal velocity besides shopping malls and telecom. There’s much more you didn’t know about in this report, so I suggest you read it thoroughly.

In this report, we’ll explore Europe again. But this time, from a military perspective. Then, we’ll review the market research reports on the predicted volumes of the different military platforms to be bought and deployed in the future, worldwide. Additionally, some new technology developments are examined. And finally, we’ll evaluate the latest M&A activity in our industry.

We touch on numerous issues in this report and add a few opinions. Clearly our economy is doing better, a claim backed-up by the latest GDP numbers. While the EU is going after U.S. technology companies for money, the DoJ and the Trump Administration are now going after Facebook and Amazon (respectively) for different reasons. Facebook played fast and loose with their member’s data, and Amazon has eliminated jobs and small businesses in retail. These effects have been ongoing for many years. In both instances, the real problem is that technology has outrun the scope of antiquated business models and industrial-era 20th century laws. What’s interesting is that neither Congress nor the courts took any interest in these trends – until now.

We are going to focus on technology in this white paper, with a brief side trip to Europe’s latest shenanigans. We are going to talk about new “open architecture” standards efforts in data center, telecom, and the military. And we’re going to talk about Col. John Boyd’s Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) loop, and how VITA standards efforts need to adapt to the new technologies coming to our little world.

Well, we have a new president, but not the one that was predicted by the polls. And, we have a new Congress, but not the one predicted by the polls. We have a new Cabinet; Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Defense, etc., but not the ones predicted by anyone. Every government organization except the Department of Agriculture has submitted a list of new weapons platforms and increased military spending recommendations to the Pentagon. U.S. corporations are dropping their plans to offshore their manufacturing and announcing new plants and hiring in our country. The new minimum wage hikes are inspiring industrial engineers to burn the midnight oil, designing completely automated burger-making machines, to replace the newly-expensive workers in the fast food industry. But those displaced workers could soon find better paying jobs in manufacturing, especially at the companies building those burger-making machines. So, in the end, it all balances out. We’ll explore these amazing events and more in this report.

A lot has happened in the past six months. It’s election season in the U.S., and that means reality has taken a holiday. Worldwide economic conditions continued to deteriorate, especially in Europe and South America. The United Kingdom slipped the surly bonds of the EU with Brexit, but the jack-booted dictators in Brussels are plotting to severely damage the British economy as the UK departs. ISIS is being driven out of the caliphate, so they are lashing out with attacks in Europe and the U.S. as they move their primary operations into other failed North African nations. An attempted military coup in Turkey has NATO in a twist.

A massive chasm is developing in computer architectures on the technology front, as the data centers go one way and the CPU vendors go another. Cloud computing is breaking into fog, mist, and fluid computing.

Actor and comedian Steve Martin once said, “Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.” The recent events and developments recounted and interpreted in this report will propose the only plausible scientific explanation for our present political, economic, and technological turmoil: we are all living in a Monty Python movie.

Writing these reports every six months is starting to feel like I’m living in the movie “Groundhog Day”. Not much difference between the last report and this one, except for many interesting details here and there. At the macro-level, what was sliding keeps sliding, and what was rising keeps rising. And, what seems like significant news on the surface is too sketchy to extrapolate into a trend (other than a new Cognitive Electronic Warfare initiative). It’s hard to see what Intel’s layoffs and fab closures say to us, other than PC demand is falling like a refrigerator down an elevator shaft. Supposedly, Cloud Computing is dead and “Fog Computing” is the next big thing (I’ll deal with that in my next report). My best logical explanation about the last six months is that the earth is presently passing through some kind of cosmic recursive phantasmagorical time-loop.

This issue of the “State of the VITA Technology Industry” recaps our current economic conditions. A further update on the situation in the middle east and how it impacts our defense spending is presented. Looking into the future of technology reveals some interesting developments that will impact high performance computing. Merger and acquisition activity across many industry segments kept the heat up during the summer.

This issue of the “State of the VITA Technology Industry” recaps our current economic conditions. A closer look is taken at the situation in the middle east and how it impacts our defense spending. An analysis of the recent acquisition of Freescale by NXP and its impact is provided.

This issue of the “State of the VITA Technology Industry” recaps our current economic conditions. A closer look is taken at the state of the U.S. defense spending as the picture has become a bit more clear on budgets for the coming year. Developments in semiconductor technology that impact the board and system market are reviewed.